Friday, January 31, 2014

I just got done watching World War Z, and thought I should check in to let everyone know that I am never sleeping again and tomorrow morning I'm going to start construction on my concrete bunker surrounded by a twenty-foot electrified wall and a moat of eternal fire.

I mean, I guess it's okay that football--and by extension other brutal sports--exists, because all those meatheads need a socially acceptable channel for their brutality and penchant for violence, but I bet something so hotly anticipated as the Superbowl brings violent people together and makes them even more violent, even more than a regular game would. I would love to see some data on the correlation of watching/playing football and domestic abuse. Let me throw this out as my suspicion: the more you watch/engage in football, the more likely you are to be a domestic abuser. Does that seem too strong? NOPE. I'm sure this data already exists and I wouldn't even have to look very hard to find it. Those of us who use our brains have suspected for a long time that domestic violence is more common in families of police officers and members of the armed forces, and sure enough, a week or two ago when a police officer murdered his whole family the news article linked to a study that says exactly that. And we have been saying the same thing about football players and rabid football watchers, data or no. When I say "we" I mean mostly me, people who didn't vocally disagree with me when I lectured them about it, and probably my mom. My mom hates football as much as I do--maybe even more. Which is really saying something. You should hear the outrageous things she and I say about football--quite offensive, some of them. Well, not just football, but the culture of football worship. And I don't like how once a year otherwise reasonable people seem to agree to not just turn a blind eye, but to slide up next to the crazy people to prostrate themselves at the altar of a sport that entices boys and young men to sacrifice for the rest of their lives the use of their knees, their backs, and their brains in hope of a few short years of glory.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that our family doesn't watch the Superbowl.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Yesterday I made chocolate paletas. Eh, they were okay. A little gritty, which I guess in a weird way makes them more authentic--you Abuelita drinkers out there know what I'm talking about--and the chocolate taste wasn't the right balance of dark and sweet. I would rank them "good-plus." Onward and upward, though.

If we think of Sunday as the first day of the week, which is right and good, then I have offended two people so far this week. That I know about. Perhaps many more unawares! I don't mean to be so prickly, but in the second case there's just something about this person that makes me bossy. I can't help it that he forces me to be the alpha in our acquaintanceship.

Today I went to Salt Lake to pick up my mixer from the shop, and John and I got lunch from some food trucks. The food was good, if overpriced and overhyped. I think people are so excited about having any kind of food truck in Salt Lake that they're losing their grip on reality just a teense. But who can blame them? For people who feel like Salt Lake is a poor backwater excuse for a city a food truck is a signifier of true urban character. But let's all just calm down, Utah--we don't need to embarrass ourselves like we did with the whole Cheesecake Factory debacle. The waffle truck people feigned ignorance regarding the multiple other waffle places in Salt Lake--one of them only about three blocks west--but were generous with the bananas and the freshly-whipped cream, so we decided not to call them on their blatant lie.

I also bought some cellophane bags for my paletas. Someday I'd like waxed paper wrappers because something about it feels better than cellophane. I tried to find some silicone molds but was unsuccessful, but I did find a number of used commercial freezers at a restaurant supply store, so if I ever decide to go big-time with this paleta thing I will go back there.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Oh my gosh I am so mad about the pencil sharpeners at the school, and I'm probably going to write a letter about it . . . but to whom? The school board? The superintendent? Who is responsible for my children's school not having a single decent electric pencil sharpener? Why does Utah spend so little on education? What is being done with the money we do spend? Boondoggle trips to South America to rent prostitutes and do blow? Secret illegal exotic animal hoarding? PROBABLY. I shall investigate.

I have a couple of sad, sad armchairs whose upholstery is 1. powder blue and 2. dingy. Untenable. I refuse to reupholster them because the attendant cursing would def. keep me out of heaven. But I saw a lady on the internet paint Rit dye on her old nasty chairs and it worked, she says there's no rub-off, and I am totally going to dye my chairs charcoal gray. Wish me luck!

Thursday, January 23, 2014

So I was listening to "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" this morning, sandwiched between the Beatles' "Two of Us" and Mozart's "Symphony No. 25 in G Minor" because thankfully I was born part of the shuffle generation, and I was thinking how disingenuous some of the lyrics are. Because they say in the chorus, "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks, let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such," and really, Willie? Really, Waylon? Maybe I've got an overly provincial attitude toward the aptitudes and interests of the typical cowboy, but I don't know a single cowboy who was like, "Hmm. Should I be a doctor or a bronc rider? A lawyer or a team roper?" In my experience, that flat out is not happening. Maybe more now in these blessed modern times in which people have more exposure to different lifestyle choices, and are maybe being taught more that they can have it all, but certainly not when that song was written.

I do think there are a goodly number of men who entertain fantasies of being cowboys and once they've made their money being lawyers and doctors they go out and buy a gentleman's ranch that they can putter around on and pretend to be Rooster Cogburn or Matt Dillon or whatever. But most lifelong cowboys I know were never going to be anything like a doctor or a lawyer. Too bad we can't go back to living in frontier towns where everybody is a cowboy, from the doctor to the storekeeper to the priest. Depending on which movie you watch it seems like a pretty great life.

Would someone do a Venn diagram of Farmers, Cowboys, Gunslingers, and Outlaws, and how often those things overlap with doctorin' and lawyerin'? Until then this thing I found on the internet will have to do: